From Below: The Intellectual Dark Web

A new force has emerged to take on the radical left that now dominates Western culture. So far it is relatively underground, but after a recent report in the New York Times revealed its existence, this underground free thought network has begun to float toward the surface.

“Crucially, the entire political axis on which traditional media still operates is shown on the intellectual dark web to be moribund,” notes Douglas Murray, one of the people who have helped start this website, called intellectualdark.website.

The website put together by @edustentialist (he hasn’t revealed his name) touts many known and relatively unknown intellectuals such as Jordan Peterson, Camille Paglia, Dave Rubin, Claire Lehmann, Christina Hoff Summers, Nicholas Christakas, Steven Pinker, Joe Rogen, Alice Dreger, Gad Saad, Jonathan Haidt and James Damore (of the Google memo fame). The website is comprised of liberals, conservatives, centrists and many who are just people with no political affiliation.

In the founder’s introduction to the website, he explains that it is a place that brings together people who share a number of convictions:

• A willingness to engage in conversations with those of different beliefs and political viewpoints
• Ideas worth listening to
• Rationality over feelings
• Honoring of freedom of speech
• Honoring of the truth
• Rejection of identity politics
• Regard for the individual
• Disregard for people who don’t want them to speak their truth
• Courage

The Intellectual Dark Web is basically a collection of videos, podcasts, TV shows, blogs and other media by the most influential people today who are speaking out against the political correctness that they feel has oppressed our culture with its militant political agenda. It is not a movement, just an assemblage of people who have common interests.

Jordan Peterson, who is one of the new Intellectual Dark Web rock stars, put out a documentary called, “Truth in a Time of Chaos,” in which he deplores a new law about the kind of pronouns that will be acceptable in Canada, causing him to almost get fired from his university. Because of a new bill called C-16, Canadians can now be fined for using the wrong pronouns. They can be fined up to $250,000 for the crime of “mis-gendering” — referring to people by any words other than their pronouns of choice (including newly constructed words such as “zie,” “hir,” “ey” “em,” “eir,” and “co”).

In his documentary, Peterson protested that the “new law pushed forward an authoritarian political agenda.” He noted that it criminalizes the use of wrong pronouns as hate speech and has been imposed “by force and fiat,” and that it signifies “a crisis and a dysfunction in Western society of which “the gender argument is only a tendril.”

The Intellectual Dark Web is in reality a connection of the many people around the world who have been speaking out against political correctness, some for years, and it is essentially a psychological process. The psychology of the Intellectual Dark Web is associated with Western society having become split into too extreme factions of radical liberalism and reactionary conservatism. The middle ground has been lost for most Westerners.

There is a phenomenon called The Stockholm syndrome. The Stockholm syndrome is a condition that causes people to develop a psychological alliance with their captors or terrorists as a survival strategy. Wikipedia notes that “Experts consider these feelings, resulting from a bond formed between captor and captives during intimate time spent together, to be irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims.” The syndrome stresses the strong emotional ties that develop between two or more persons or groups where one person or group intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.

The Stockholm syndrome got its name in 1973 when four hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. The hostages later, after being released, defended their captors and refused to testify in court against them. The hostages had formed a strong alliance with them and had come to firmly believe in their cause.

Freud spoke of the defense mechanism “identification with the aggressor.” It was a term actually coined by Sandor Ferenczi and elaborated by Anna Freud, The phrase “identification with the aggressor” refers to a paradoxical behavior that can only be explained as a defense maneuver, which involves the victim of aggression identifying with and acting like the aggressor. The Stockholm syndrome and identification with the aggressor are related; both involve people being influenced by acts of aggression.

Thinkers on the Dark Web believe the radical left has gradually taken over society. Jonathan Haidt (Author and Professor, NYU-Stern) joins Dave Rubin, discussing political correctness and free speech on college campus. Christina Hoff Sommers talks about how feminism became more militant and morphed into what she calls gender feminism, which has had a destructive effect on the family and parenting. Dave Rubin discusses the progressive groupthink in Silicon Valley, his new phrase for Social Engineering. Steven Crowder joins Dave Rubin to discuss how leftist political comedy has taken over SNL and the Hollywood Awards Shows.

The Dark Web views all radical movements as terrorizing people into submission. Altogether, they appear to have brought about a mass Stockholm syndrome, first in America and later spreading throughout the West. One of their most notable features is the impingement on free thought and free speech and the emphasis on rights of certain groups while curtailing the rights of other groups and of individuals.

Some of the people connected with the Intellectual Dark Web believe that the stranglehold of the radical left is beginning to crumble. More and more people are speaking out. Where this will all end remains to be seen.

From Below: The Intellectual Dark Web

Gerald Schoenewolf, Ph.D.

Gerald Schoenewolf, Ph.D. is a licensed psychoanalyst in New York and has been practicing for over 37 years. He works with adults, couples, families, adolescents, and children. He has graduated from three psychotherapy institutes and received a Certificate in Psychoanalysis from the Washington Square Institute in 1981. He has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor of psychology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College since 2002 and has authored thirteen books on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as well as four novels and a book of poems and drawings. More recently he wrote 20 screenplays (winning four first-place awards at festivals) and produced and directed two feature films.